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Bill de Blasio pushes in Albany for his plan to tax the rich to pay for "pre-kindergarten" — never mind that the real reason behind the increase appears to be paying for union contracts. Photo: AP

There’s an old saying in Albany: Beware politicians bearing new spending they claim is “for the children.”

Actually, there is no such saying. But there ought to be. Especially now that Mayor de Blasio has revealed the truth ­behind his tax-the-rich-for-pre-K rhetoric: It’s about class war and organized labor.

Throughout his campaign, transition and early days of his mayoralty, de Blasio has demanded Albany raise taxes on city residents making more than $500,000 so he could fund universal pre-K. Even when Gov. Cuomo put forth a fully funded pre-K plan that did not require raising taxes, de Blasio rejected it.

On Monday, at an Albany budget hearing, he finally confirmed why. When asked why he didn’t use the city’s projected $2.4 billion surplus to fund pre-K, de Blasio answered: “Because of the profoundly great unknown of the open labor contracts.” In other words, even though he has the money, “the children” have to wait until the public-employees unions are paid off.

Though de Blasio tried to backtrack by saying pre-K and union-contract negotiations were “two ships passing in the night,” the truth had been let out of the bag. And it confirms what The Post has been saying all along: that “the children” was just the cynical way de Blasio dressed up his real intention, which is to punish the wealthy.

But until Monday, when he slipped into a moment of candor, we hadn’t yet heard it from the horse’s . . . uh . . . mouth.